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Updated: May 19, 2025
The obstinate and successful defence of the Chataldja lines and the subsequent recovery of eastern Thrace with Adrianople, the first European seat of the Osmanlis, had almost effaced the sense of Osmanli disgrace, and stood to the general credit of the Committee and the individual credit of its military leader, Enver Bey.
Even if the Bulgarian delay at Chataldja a delay probably due to exhaustion had not given the Turks time to strengthen their defences and reorganize their forces, it is practically certain that the Bulgarian army would not have been permitted to enter Constantinople. But with the exception of the capital and its fortified fringe, all Turkey in Europe now lay at the mercy of the Allies.
It followed that the Bulgarians, who had proposed to do no more in Thrace than block Adrianople and immobilize the Constantinople forces, were carried by their own momentum right down to Chataldja, and there and at Adrianople had to prosecute siege operations when they ought to have been marching to Kavala and Salonika.
We got safely to Chataldja, and were received by von Oesterzee like long-lost brothers. He was the regular gunner-officer, not thinking about anything except his guns and shells. I had to wait about three hours while he was checking the stuff with the invoices, and then he gave me a receipt which I still possess. I told him about Rasta, and he agreed that I had done right.
No, thank you. I am going to see them safe at Chataldja, or whatever they call the artillery depot. I said a good deal more, but that is an abbreviated translation of my remarks. My word for 'blighter' was trottel, but I used some other expressions which would have ravished my Young Turk friend to hear.
Here was a country which only thirty-five years earlier had been an unknown and despised province of Turkey in Europe now overwhelming the armies of the Ottoman Empire in the great victories of Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, and Chorlu. In a few weeks the irresistible troops of King Ferdinand had reached the Chataldja line of fortifications.
And it was Bulgarians, Greeks, and Servians, with the active assistance of the Montenegrins and the benevolent neutrality of the Roumanians, who, in the war of 1912-1913, drove the Turk out of Europe, leaving him nothing but the city of Constantinople and a territorial fringe bordered by the Chataldja line of fortifications.
And, as if Bulgaria had not enemies enough on her back already, the Turkish Army on July 12 left the Chataldja fortifications, crossed the Enos-Midia line, and in less than two weeks, with Enver Bey at its head, re-occupied Adrianople.
The Greeks, instead of hard contests for the Haliacmon Valley and Epirus their proper Irredenta pushed such weak forces before them that they got through to Salonika just in time to forestall a Bulgarian column. Ottoman collapse was complete everywhere, except on the Chataldja front. It remained to divide the spoil.
'I am sorry, Rasta Bey, he said; 'but this man is in the right. 'I have authority from the Committee to receive the stores, he said sullenly. 'Those are not my instructions, was the answer. 'They are consigned to the Artillery commandant at Chataldja, General von Oesterzee. The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Very well.
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